I've never been a huge fan of Christmas. Beyond the dissolved religious value of the holiday (and if we were actually celebrating it, we'd be celebrating sometime in January, after a month of fasting), something about the holiday period still makes me despair for humanity. Perhaps it's those last minute shoppers, barging through crowds of pedestrians to reach the zenith of Marks & Spencer to get the last coffee-maker on the shelf, which will only be used twice before its relegation to the storage cabinet. Or, it might be the ever elusive, abstract construction of the 'Christmas Spirit', a weird exertion of Marx's 'opiate' that encourages a temporary therapy from material problems, through engaging with a material individualism. Certainly, it's genius is not in the resultant amnesia that the tyrannical spirit bequeaths on those that accept it, but how it has been constructed, branded and utilised within common discourse to encourage irrational purchasing.
Many people have commented on my reservations for Christmas, and I've had my fair amount of 'Scrooge!' accusations- or (more novel, I think) , 'Oh it's because you're Muslim, innit'. Much of this probably has to do with an acknowledgement that these types of national holidays should be exempt from post-modern tendencies of deconstruction; Probably the best modern example could be seen in those who criticised the celebration of the Queen's jubilee, or even the Royal wedding, only to find themselves marginalised by a collective sense of apathy. In other words, 'shut up and enjoy the company' seems to be the dominant mantra of stoical, modern, secular Britain today.
The second contention, is that the Christmas of the 'post-modern' undergoes a foundational transition along the same lines as society; ie. that the Christmas of a 'Godless' society transitions from one of ecclesiastical worship to tendencies more altruistic and communal. Christmas is about 'giving', 'sharing' and 'caring' and whatever other type of utopian verb one can conjure up from a seasonal advertisement from Sainsburys. But it is within this particular form of political economy, that allows the 'Christmas spirit' truly to truly thrive, constructing a temporary reality whereby the assumed individualist tendencies of society are forgotten. In this sense, the 'spirit' does not create, but rather induces an unreachable possibility of a world devoid of destructive selfishness.
There is of course, a peculiar irony behind such messages. In the past few years, collective social movements such as Occupy Wall Street, have helped to spark debates on the social role of corporations within the wider economy- particularly in terms of wages, labour rights and the nature of production. Furthermore, the movements have opened up wider concerns relating to social dependence on mass consumption, whereby products might be seen through the lens of Baudrillard; - situated within discursive systems of meaning and identity, and in so doing work to define social value.
The dark side of the 'post-modern' construction of Christmas therefore seems to lie within the flux of this transition. On the one hand, the holiday has been liberated from its religious monopoly, in turn signifying the the substantial power shift between Church and society over the past couple of decades. Yet, this has not necessarily created the reciprocal communality that non-religious advocates of Christmas have tend believe in. Rather, I'd argue that different relationships between advertisers and consumers have been forged, constituting more personalised contracts. In this case, consumers who purchase particular products also buy into the necessary altruist actions- ones which are required to fill those gaping emotional holes eclectically illustrated in seminal Christmas ads.
To me, Christmas posits an alternate realm in which the tyrannical Christmas spirit presents itself as "emotional consumerism with a human face", by which I mean the actual act of purchasing and giving give products meaning themselves. If we consider that this manipulation is the inevitable product of the relationship between advertising companies and corporations, then altruistic meanings are not simply attributed to products, but also define the processes of exchange and communal gathering. Indeed, as a notorious advertisement suggests, "This is not just Christmas, this is an M&S Christmas".
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